It's worth delving deeper into the Atlantic article O.J. posted above, and especially a linked article from that one.

The easiest thing to say about this map is that "non-payers" ironically seem more likely to vote Republican and "payers" seem more likely to vote Democratic. But we can't say that for two reasons.

The first reason is that low income earners are much more likely to vote Democratic, even within Republican states. In 2008, Obama lost Georgia by 5 percentage points but he won 70% of voters who earned less than $30,000 -- which is precisely the demo most likely to owe no federal income tax. Obama lost Mississippi by 14 percentage points, but picked up 66% of voters who earned less than $30,000. As a general rule, Republicans win among richer voters -- both in the red states and the blue.

The second factor that complicates our efforts to determine how the 47% vote is that this group is divided between older people and poorer working families. Older people vote in higher numbers. But families earning less than $20,000 voted 30% less than the national average, while households earning more than $150,000 were 30% more likely to vote than average.

Devil's in the details. Basically those "non-income-tax-paying" states simply are the poorest in the country, and the poorest residents (while more likely to vote Democratic) are less likely to vote.

Have to admit, this surprised me a bit. I've generally figured that poor folks in the deep south tend to be ultra-religious, and will vote Republican based on that alone.

[edit] I overlooked this line, which brings this more into focus:

Editor's aside: Voter turnout is also highly correlated with variables like race, but I don't have data on the 47% broken down by those demographics.

One party of capital doesn't pretend it isnt, the other party of capital has to pretend, for electoral reasons, that it's not. With the paymaster's bucket list so well and easily enacted, why mess with success?

Appearently it is a big enough deal that Jonah Goldberg is the one of the last men standing to be hauled onto national petroleum radio on Mitt's behalf.

He gives a pretty weak defense, though. He keeps backing off as Siegel questions him, and in the end the defense is summed up in the last paragraph, where he says entitlement payments to individuals have increased 724% since 1960, causing some people to have a sense the game is being rigged (either for the recipients of those payments or against the non-recipients, I suppose).

This he believes will cause people to favor Romney's position, or maybe Ryan's.

Of course what he leaves out is incidentals like the enormous rise in medical expenses since 1960, the flatness of the minimum wage and fall of real wages vs cost of living, rise in cost of higher education, and similar factors causing life in general to get more costly over time while incomes haven't kept up, along with the increased number of people in demographics normally receiving support (elderly, disabled, veterans, retirees, etc).

So it's an argument carefully tailored to sound better without in-depth examination, after he pretty much abandons earlier defenses under questioning.

Real people are so much messier than corporate people. They need regular maintenance (which costs money! Can you believe it!) and aren't easily mothballed in a file cabinet (or, better, a hard drive or a cloud) until they might be of use, or created or ended with the stroke of a pen/tap of a keyboard.

It seems to me that Mitt Romney is ill-equipped to deal with the reality of real people. Which makes his decision to go into politics kind of odd. Maybe a lifetime of privilege and power caused him to wrongly estimate his political skills.

Zoti Bemba wrote:It seems to me that Mitt Romney is ill-equipped to deal with the reality of real people. Which makes his decision to go into politics kind of odd. Maybe a lifetime of privilege and power caused him to wrongly estimate his political skills.

It seems to me that Mitt Romney is ill-equipped to deal with the reality of anything other than business. Not government as business, not society as business, nothing more than plain old business. Anyone with significant exposure to the business world Romney comes from knows that "good at business" does not necessarily mean "smart," and Romney is the very embodiment of that.

No doubt, a lifetime of power and privilege has severely skewed Mitt's self-perception. His decision to go into politics was driven by ego and greed, the belief that he can use the government to enrich and empower himself and his people, as he's done with so many businesses before. Any nod to America is pure theater.

wack wack wrote:It seems to me that Mitt Romney is ill-equipped to deal with the reality of anything other than business. Not government as business, not society as business, nothing more than plain old business. Anyone with significant exposure to the business world Romney comes from knows that "good at business" does not necessarily mean "smart," and Romney is the very embodiment of that.

No doubt, a lifetime of power and privilege has severely skewed Mitt's self-perception. His decision to go into politics was driven by ego and greed, the belief that he can use the government to enrich and empower himself and his people, as he's done with so many businesses before. Any nod to America is pure theater.

Obama clearly surpasses Rawmoney in intellect, political shrewdness, and isn't nearly as ham fisted letting folks know that he remembers who lines his pockets, even without insulting half the population in the process. Obama addressing a $30,000 a plate fundraiser and having a laugh at the expense of his progressive critics;"Now, the second reason I'm telling you this is because Democrats tend to see the glass half empty.(laughter) If we get a historic healthcare bill passed--oh well, the public option wasn't there. If you get the financial reform bill passed--then, well, I don't know about this particularly derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we have not yet brought about world peace and--(laughter) I thought that was going to happen quicker.(laughter) You know who you are.(laughter)http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/16/remarks-president-dnc-event

Stella, you get that he's actually poking fun at his audience, the people in the room, right? Good-natured teasing is a classic tactic to establish intimacy, and it keeps the tone light even if the content is serious or scolding. Here's what follows the passage you quoted:

Obama wrote:We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation. And so I want everybody here to -- when you are talking to your friends and your neighbors and your coworkers, I want you to feel good about the support that you've provided, because you didn’t send me there to do what was easy; you sent me there to do what was hard. We have tackled some of the hardest problems facing this country and we did so in the midst of crisis -- and we are succeeding.

"You know who you are" is a lot easier for an audience to swallow than "Quit fucking whining, we've accomplished a lot, we need to do more, now give me your goddamned money because the campaign never stops."

Ducatista wrote:Stella, you get that he's actually poking fun at his audience, the people in the room, right? Good-natured teasing is a classic tactic to establish intimacy, and it keeps the tone light even if the content is serious or scolding. "

I'm sure the hosts of the event, real estate developers Richard and Ellen Richman (really their name), had a good laugh when in return for their fund raising efforts they recieved a $21 million subsidy thru the stimulus for their $100 million development.

Yeah, right, I get that you're convinced Dems and Repubs are essentially the same in their callow corruption.

Doesn't change the fact that you mischaracterized Obama's 2010 remarks. That section of Obama's talk has got to be exhausted by now from how often people trot it out (still!), and it's probably aggravated at how many of them, like you, give the next paragraph a pass and biff the meaning.